I SAW PRESIDENT KENNEDY ONCE

     When I was young, I stood in front of the podium with my mom in a suburb of Pittsburgh to watch President John F Kennedy deliver an impassioned speech.

  
     We came within 10 minutes of shaking his hand that day, but he received a phone call right at the bottom step of the grand stand from where he had just finished speaking. Later we found out that the call came from Washington D.C. informing him of the Cuban missile crisis.  That information was confirmed years later when I saw a special on the Cuban missile crisis on the A&E television network and there he was on the phone just as I remembered

        How does that relate to art you ask?  Well as I watched him speak, "larger than life", the worlds most powerful man.  He almost glowed.

        What a surreal scene, Kennedy passionately speaking, about I can't remember what, with a large western Pennsylvania mountain covered in green foliage behind him.  The breeze blowing and him constantly moving his famous brown flowing hair off his brow.

        My point in writing about this memory is that anything you experience in life can inspire you to be creative, even if it occurred in years past.

        That experience left a lasting impression on me, not only Kennedy's charismatic presence, but while I was standing there in the crowd, I glanced around at the surrounding area, every building had a police officer on the roof with a rifle.  What I later found out was that even the mountain behind the President had several police sharp shooters on it to protect him.

        It's a shame that Dallas wasn't as safe.  But in fairness, Dallas was a much larger and more complicated area to secure, never the less, what is past is past.

        You know with such a vivid memory of that event, I never did paint the scene that unfolded before me.  As I look back on that experience, maybe I will someday.

ENJOY THE JOURNEY MY FRIENDS...ZMAKEY

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